“We say, no we are not involved in any way in the attack. What happened to Mr Reeve was solely an attack by Jodie Barnes.” Mr Parkins described the prosecution’s case that both women killed Mr Reeve as the “easy option”. He said: “This is not a joint enterprise. They went there to borrow money – to steal – and one of them lost it. We know which one it was.”

He told the court that Jodie took the lead and attacked the 67-year-old to get money out of him, while Kelly, 32, went about stealing items. Mr Parkins suggested that Jodie, 31, had continued the attack on the father on a second visit to the home later that day, while Kelly had waited in a taxi.

He said there was no evidence to show that two people carried out the murder. He told the jury: “One of them did it, we can all be sure of that.” And he described his client as an “unsophisticated” person and claimed Kelly had “flipped suddenly” before attacking Mr Reeve.